


Home, Is Where I Want To Be

by ViolentlyRed



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bonding, Comfort, Crying, Emotions, Friendship, Gah, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, Keith (Voltron) is a Good Friend, Keith is fucking two years older but whatever idc, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron) is bad at validating his feelings sometimes, Lance and Keith both cry, Lance is having a rough time, Lance is sad, M/M, OKAY ENOUGH TAGS, Others Mentioned - Freeform, Post Season 6, Season 6 got me FUCKED UP, but i wrote it ambiguously, but inspired me to write, could be read as, friendship more than anything, i actually worked hard on this though, im a mess, klance, lance feels useless, lance is insecure, season 6 aftermath, so friendship if you want, this is me projecting all of my Lance feelings into this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 14:13:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14956160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViolentlyRed/pseuds/ViolentlyRed
Summary: Lance looks sad. Keith feels weird. Everything is settling.Or, in the aftermath of season 6, Keith finds Lance inevitably falling apart. And he stays. Lance struggles, Keith learns, and they do it together.





	Home, Is Where I Want To Be

**Author's Note:**

> Raise your hand if season 6 got you FUCKED UPPPPP  
> (every single hand ever raises, including Keith's and Lance's)
> 
> I noticed a lot of things. And I cried. And I wrote this to console myself and all of you guys. Basically, this is me trying to fix things, or at least shed a little light on them, in my trademark, slut-for-angst-and-comfort way.
> 
> Could be read as Klance, I wrote it as friendship, it's up to you. They're both fragile and hurting, so that's all that matters to me >:)
> 
> Be sure to comment with thoughts and feelings! Enjoy, my friends.

 

Lance looks sad.

Keith feels weird.

Everything is settling.

"I guess we're going home, then," Keith says and then everyone smiles and Lance still looks upset and vaguely sick but no one mentions it. They all head off to do separate things and organize their lions for the trip home, having decided to camp out for the night and start the journey tomorrow.

 _Holy Shit We Just Saved the Fucking Universe_ hasn't really sunken in, yet.

Shiro is resting in the Black Lion with Krolia and Coran. Keith gathers the team around the mouth of Black and sits everyone down in front of him and tells them everything. About his mom, about the mission. About his childhood.

About his dad.

About the foster homes and how Shiro came into his life and saved him.

They all listen through it silently, not one word uttered, and wipe away tears when he's finished talking.

Pidge manages to speak first, telling Keith in a wobbly voice that it was really brave of him to say all of that stuff, and then she wraps her small arms around his waist and cries into his chest and tells him how much he means to her. How much they love him.

And Keith feels a weight lift and he cries and everyone cries and it's a big group hug and they're all crying. Hunk and Allura say how much they love him and Lance says nothing.

Time passes and the sky grows tangerine.

Keith finds him sitting on the edge of the mouth of Red, eyes downcast, scuffing his feet in the dirt. He's found his blue tee-shirt and jeans, but his boots are missing. He looks deflated, eyes still red and puffy, which means that he must have been crying again.

"Hey," Keith says lightly.

Lance lifts his head and musters a fake smile, looks a little surprised to see Keith. "Oh, hey."

Keith gestures to the empty spot next to him. "Mind if I sit?"

"Be my guest," Lance says softly.

They look out at the hazy orange sky together, side-by-side, bruised and older and still tender in the day's aftermath. A warm breeze ruffles their hair and their clothes. Their Paladin armor sits abandoned in the green lion's hangar, tucked away. The battle is over, for now.

"Long day, huh?"

Lance lets out an unusually dry chuckle, barely a whisper. "Yeah. You could say that again."

Keith sighs, bones creaking. He turns his head. "It's been a while, Lance."

"I guess it has," Lance smiles, though it's paper-thin and weary. "Considering you're two years older now."

Keith stares back out at the cracked tan landscape around them. "Heh, yeah, that's... that's a thing. Still the same me, though," he tacks on after Lance doesn't respond. "Just with a mom and a space wolf, now. But still me."

Lance smiles politely and looks away. He's so guarded in this moment, so unusually not himself. His eyes hold a sadness that Keith hasn't seen in a while, he looks exhausted. "Are you okay?" Keith asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Hunk once told him that Lance was hesitant to change. And after a day of betrayals and deaths and now Keith's older and has a mom and a wolf/dog and the castle blew up and Lotor's a dick and Shiro's back and has white hair and, well.

Keith guesses that would do it.

He nudges Lance with a sore elbow. "Hey, c'mon. We just saved the universe."

"Yeah, I know," Lance says half-heartedly, lukewarm smile still looking out of place on his tan face.

"Hey." Keith leans forward a bit more, feeling the worry in the bottom of his stomach. Geez, he thought he'd exhausted all of that already today. "Talk to me."

"But did we? Or did you guys?"

_What?_

Keith blinks. "Wait, what?"

Lance bites his bottom lip and loosely grips the edge of the metal platform. "Did _we_ save the universe, or did _you guys_ save the universe?"

Keith doesn't really know what to say. "What do you mean? Lance, you-"

"Did what, Keith? Hunk helped restore the plates, Pidge saved us all in the castle, Allura _literally_ brought Shiro back to life." Lance lets out a breathy laugh, bitter and uncanny. "You found your mom and found out about Lotor and you saved Shiro, and came back and lead us all to a victory in the Black Lion, and I..." he looks down to the ground, seemingly disgusted with himself, "I didn't do anything."

"Of course you did! How can you say that?"

"Because I really didn't, Keith," Lance says desperately, so convinced of himself that it makes Keith's stomach hurt. "Shiro tried to call out to me, once, on that astral plane, and I was useless!" Tears collect in his brown eyes, glassy and painful, his voice wobbles and breaks. "I didn't help him, I didn't help anybody. I'm useless," he says, barely above a whisper. "All of you are so, so magnificent. And I'm just... not."

Keith swallows, fumbling for words. He's spent two years with one of the most anti-social people he's ever met and a wolf who doesn't talk, and it is really not helping him right now. "I..."

And then a switch flips and Lance actually _laughs_.

"Look, it's alright," he says with that sick smile again, gentle and so fake it makes Keith's teeth hurt. Lance shakes his head, "I'm sorry. You should be spending time with Shiro, and your mom, and catching up with everyone-"

"I spent two years with my mom," Keith says, probably too harsh but he'll be damned if Lance is gonna tell him how to spend his time, "And now I want to spend time with you-"

"Keith, please, I'm -"

"No, bullshit!" Because Keith's-- because he knows he's been gone but- but this is ridiculous. "Lance, what brought this on? Why-"

"Because I COULDN'T SAVE HIM!" Lance shouts, and Keith clamps his mouth shut.

Oh.

The first tear falls. Lance draws in a measured breath and knots a hand in his hair. "Because he tried to tell me, and I didn't do anything. Because this is my fault, and I should have done something more." He sighs, eyebrows drawn up, lines of worry pressed into his tan skin, "Because everything is just fixed and yet I still feel completely and totally _lost_ , Keith, and I don't know what to do."

_Oh._

Keith brings his legs up and folds them, leaning back on his hands and blowing out a loose breath.

Lance moves to get up. "Look," he mumbles, "you should rest. You don't need to hear this, it's stupid."

Keith grabs his wrist. Lance flinches but doesn't pull away and Keith gently tugs him back to a sitting position, letting go once it seems like Lance won't leave.

Lance sniffles after a moment. And again, and again, he takes a shuddering breath and swipes at his eyes with the heels of his palms. Keith doesn't look, doesn't need to see.

They sit in silence for a long while, Lance furiously trying to keep himself together until he says wetly, "You never called."

And suddenly, a piece of Keith's heart chips away.

"You never called, Keith." Lance sniffles and wipes his hands on his jeans, Keith doesn't miss the tremble in his fingers, the wobble in his voice when he says, "You left and you never called, you never kept in contact. Only when there was a mission with us and the Blade did we see your face." Lance shrugs nonchalantly, like he's stating facts. "Other than that? Not once."

His body heaves with a choked-in sob and Keith bites his lip and Lance's voice breaks. He says, so brokenly, "Not once."

"I... I'm sorry," Keith whispers, mouth like cotton, trying to swallow past the lump in his throat, guilt pooling in his stomach. His mind races.

"I mean, did you think that we would still just stop caring? Because that's not what happened," Lance continues, full body trembling. "You left and we... there was a hole. And things went to shit and you weren't there, Keith. You just left and -" Lance sniffles and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, " - and you made it seem so easy. But it _wasn't."_ With each sentence, Lance's voice swells with hurt that rolls through Keith's heart like storm clouds on a hot day. "It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy for us. We missed you, so much. All the time, every day."

Keith's chest hurts as he hears this. Needles in his heart, in and out, in and out.

"It wasn't easy for me," Lance says, weathered by tears and pain and a very long day. He breathes out a choked-in cry, breathless and broken from the back of his throat.

Oh, _god_.

"And it was like one after the other," Lance continues, voice frail and rushed. "Shiro left and then you left and Shiro was there but he wasn't the same. And you just." Lance slaps his palm weakly against the metal surface, voice a raw grief that cracks Keith's rib cage open with wire cutters when he says, with a sad smile, barely above a whisper,

"You just never called."

Keith's heart sinks and Lance lets out a choked sob, undignified, like he's not allowed to.

There are tears running down Keith's own cheeks, now, cool in the swells of the breeze. "I'm sorry, Lance," he whispers, heart beating, aching. He feels sick.

"I'm so glad you found your family, Keith," Lance says, raking a damp, shaking hand through his hair. His breath catches wetly in his throat. "But we were your family too, right?"

Keith presses a fist to his mouth.

"Right?" Lance asks again smally, this time with wider eyes, almost pleading for Keith to respond, and he sounds and looks so genuinely scared and Keith chokes out a yes.

Lance draws his knees to his chest. He says, without scorn, "I don't know if you forgot, but we were here. And we always were." He buries his face in his kneecaps and shudders, trying earnestly to silence his cries.

_How did it get to this?_

Keith sniffles and fumbles for Lance's hand in the fading sunset, swiping his jeans and holding it tightly. _Jesus Christ._ "Lance, I'm sorry," pathetically, desperately, "I'm so sorry."

And his chest aches horribly. Because he didn't mean to leave. He didn't mean to leave them like that, with a hole. That wasn't what he meant to do. That's not what he thought he was doing. But then -

But then, what _was_ he doing?

Lance sniffles and looks at the ground beneath their feet, dusty and beige. "Whenever I was around you, I felt like a good right hand. I felt like I was doing something, making a difference, I felt important. And you went away and I went back to being just -" Lance takes a shuddering breath, " - average me, back to being useless because Shiro was there, and Lotor and Allura, and - and Shiro hated me, and I would listen to Pidge and Hunk talk about science and I wouldn't understand it. And logically, yeah, I was okay, but I really wasn't. _I really wasn't_ , _Keith_ , " Lance says, staring at the ground with wide eyes, tears streaming down his face, gripping Keith's hand like a lifeline.

"I'm sorry, Lance," Keith whispers pathetically again, because that's all he can say, he feels hollow and two inches tall and it's all he can say. His world has crumbled in for the eighth time that day, the bruises on his face throb and he aches, inside and out.

And Keith thinks that it can't get any worse than this but then Lance says, "A piece of our family was gone. You were a really big piece," Lance says, and he looks into Keith's eyes, face puffy and red and eyes swollen. "And I'm really glad you're okay," Lance breathes before he completely breaks apart, weeping into the hand clapped over his mouth.

"Lance," Keith whispers. He pulls him in and Lance falls apart.

"I cradled you in my arms," Keith says wetly after a moment, remembering when.

Lance cries even harder.

Keith can feel jagged breaths through the tee-shirt on his chest, and his ribs are sore but his heart hurts even more. He places a hand on the back of Lance's head, smooths his hair down like his mother did to him on that Time Whale's back when Keith finally fell apart. "I'm sorry. You're my family, too," he whispers into the top of Lance's hair, tears falling into the brown strands. "I should have called."

Lance snakes an arm around Keith's back, and they stay. Sore, intimate, awfully close, 1/4 alien but so frightfully human in this moment. Keith returns the embrace and breathes.

"It's alright. It's been a long day."

Lance's cries quiet after a while, still pressed to Keith's chest, but he still trembles not long after the sun has dipped over the horizon. Only murky lilac lingers in the sky now.

Keith draws in a breath and lets it out. "You're not useless, Lance. You're one of my best friends, and you're valuable and smart and I'm sorry I wasn't there. We couldn't have done this without you. We really couldn't have," Keith says hoarsely, tears drying sticky on his cheeks in the warm twilight breeze. "I wouldn't have been able to save Shiro. We wouldn't be here. Lance, you are  _priceless_ to this team. You're our glue," he says after a moment.

Lance pulls away, wipes his face with his sleeve, voice calmer, "I'm not a leader, I'm not smart-"

"But you hold us together, Lance," Keith stresses. "You really do. You make us laugh and you keep us together and you care so much," Keith continues, starting to choke up again because it's been a really long fucking day, "You are the reason we keep going, so many times, over and over."

Lance doesn't say anything.

Keith wraps an arm around his shoulders. It's instinct, to pull Lance in tightly, to hold him in his arms until Lance's shaking stops and the doubt leaves his head, until it's okay. Even though it might never be.

They sit in silence.

"I'm so tired, Keith," Lance says softly after a while, staring at the dark night clouds on the horizon. Another tear slips down his cheek, solitary. This tear is different, shed in the aftermath of an intergalactic warfare fought by teenagers and prisoners and princesses from near-extinct races, heard only in the voice of a graveled warrior, sanded down into a husk of who he was, grown up but still so young.

Saviors of the Universe but they've still got whole lives to live.

"Yeah, me too," Keith says. "But we get to go home now."

And that's all Lance wanted, right? More than anything, he wanted to see his family again.

Lance swallows and wipes his shaking hands on his jeans again. "It... It's going to be so nice to see my family, but..." he looks at Keith out of the side of his eye, chooses his words with painstaking care. He stares at his hands. "I don't want that to mean I lose this family, too, you know?"

He's _afraid_ , Keith realizes. It's like a bucket of cold water was just dumped on his head. Lance is afraid of losing them. Keith's heart splits for the eight hundredth time that day and all he can think is _no no no NO_ so he pulls Lance closer to him and looks him in the eye and says fiercely, like a flame in the night, " _You_ _won't_."

Change is so fickle, Keith thinks. Good, bad, it twists time and molds hours and eras. It takes and it takes and it takes.

"You won't lose us, Lance," Keith says again, surprised to find tears falling down his own face again as he realizes to lose these people from his life again would split his world into peices. This is his family. More than blood, this is his family. "We won't leave. I promise. I won't let that happen. I won't leave again."

Lance sniffles and Keith rubs circles on his back and stares at the stars.

"And I promise you, if I have to go, I'll be sure to call." He gives Lance a watery smile and Lance finally relaxes his shoulders and lets out a breath, deflating to let his forehead dip onto Keith's shoulder.

"Thanks."

Keith rests his chin in the downy mess of Lance's hair for a moment until Lance sniffles and pulls away to look out at the fading purple of the last dregs of twilight as they descend into night time.

"Aren't we a mess?" Keith laughs breathily. He feel the weight of the day collapsing in his shoulders, around his neck and down his throat. His head pounds and his back aches. He is so beat.

Lance smiles genuinely and Keith's heart twinges because this one's real, finally. His eyes are puffy, bruises from his helmet forming along his jawline. "Yeah, you said it."

After a moment, he speaks again, dried tear tracks shining in the light of a distant lion. His voice is velvet and gravel to Keith's tired ears. "Thank you, Keith. I'm really glad you got Shiro back again, and I'm glad you found your mom," he says genuinely into the night. "And I'm really happy that you told us about your past. And I'm sorry. I know you've had a really rough life. And you didn't deserve it."

"Its in the past. I'm now with the people who matter most in my life," Keith says honestly, heart hurting, looking at the lions in a circle stretching around them. _God, Lance has grown so much._

"And I, um." Lance pauses, lets his breath sit in the night air. "I don't even know if I deserve to say it, but. For what it's worth, I think your dad would be really proud of you."

Holding Lance a little tighter, Keith chokes out a thanks and tries not to cry again.

It's almost bizzare to think that the team used to be so solitary. And now they're fiercely together, molded by space and time and battle, by a found family and the knowledge that they aren't alone anymore, that they don't have to be. It's funny, to think how Lance and Keith used to bicker with actual scorn, how Allura and Coran both fell out of pods on that wild day. So much has changed.

The lilac has faded from the sky, now a deep ocean blue. The night isn't very cold on this planet, and the breeze has died down to a warm, gentle ghost that occasionally ruffles their hair.

They sit in comfortable, warm silence, leaning against each other, red and black, bruised faces and sore limbs, guilty hearts and splintered wood wrapped in white cotton bandages. They're bloody and cracked, but they'll heal. Together, all of them.

For the first time in a while, Keith lets himself think that maybe it will be okay.

Lance eventually dozes off, head against Keith's shoulder. A large knit blanket and pillows appear from nowhere, Keith vaguely remembers his mom pressing her fingers to his cheek fondly and then they're alone in the mouth of a lion that is equal parts theirs, original and newfound, growth and moving on.

Lance curls up against the hard metal, clutching a pillow, swollen eyes closed. Keith presses his own bruised face into a pillow and throws half of the huge blanket over Lance's form.

He's half-asleep when he reaches out and squeezes Lance's shoulder and he hears the others distant voices carry in the night time breeze and his heart blooms because even though they're going back to Earth tomorrow, Keith knows.

_He's already home._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Home, is where I want to be  
> But I guess I'm already there
> 
> Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place), The Talking Heads, 1983


End file.
